


I Heard the Prayers You Would Not Speak

by songlin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Immortality, M/M, Multiverse, Red String of Fate, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:06:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"He should not be able to come back," said Mycroft. "It's not the done thing."</i>
</p><p>Sherlock looks for every one of John's lifetimes. Sometimes, they have years. Others, he never finds him. Nevertheless, it's one way to spend immortality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Heard the Prayers You Would Not Speak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cookieswillcrumble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookieswillcrumble/gifts).



> First off, I am the fucking _worst._
> 
> Cookieswillcrumble won this off me in the AO3 auction, and I jumped at it. Much later, I realized how much research and planning was going to be required, and progress slowed to a fucking crawl. (See: Written, a similar concept, also a request, which I _am_ actually working on. God, the research.)
> 
> While I was doing my end-of-year "no I am going to work on things if it kills me" spree, I remembered I hadn't so much as posted any of this, and I got the request in...April. So, Cookies, I owe you a thousand apologies, but here's the first chunk of your fic. Thank you again for your generous donation to this most excellent site!

Sherlock has given up on finding him when they walk straight into each other.

“Here, you can use mine,” says Dr. John Watson.

Something stirs at the sound of that voice. Sherlock holds out his hand without looking up. But there it is again, like a small spark when their fingers meet as the doctor passes him his phone. Sherlock looks up and feels his diaphragm freeze.

He is small this time, deceptively so, an open invitation for underestimation. Sherlock suddenly, _painfully_ misses being able to know whatever he wanted just by looking properly. He has to work for it these days. But then, with this man, he always had. So he looks.

Sherlock grins. “Afghanistan or Iraq?” he says, and then walks into John Watson’s head.

———

When Sherlock first found him, his name was Alexandros, and he was afraid of the dark.

Considered alone, this was unexceptional. Fear and the unknown were Sherlock’s domains, as craftiness and learning were his brother’s and wisdom, medicine and the crafts their mother’s. He heard hundreds of prayers from little boys who feared the darkness under their beds.

But this boy wasn’t praying.

Sherlock’s attentions would not have been summoned at all if not for the boy’s brother. He prayed even though he _wasn’t_ afraid of the dark, but had been told to say his prayers at night and so did. Sherlock came for the boy who called his name, and stayed for the boy who lay awake next to him.

“I’ll look in another hundred breaths,” he whispered. “In a hundred breaths, if I’m still awake, I’ll look in the corner.”

He never looked before the hundredth breath, and if he lost count, he started over. Sherlock was intrigued. He wondered what the boy would do if there was a monster one day.

The boy’s brother grew up and stopped praying, but Sherlock kept visiting. He watched the boy turn seven, eight, nine. He never stopped his game, the game he played to make himself brave. His prayers to himself.

When the boy was ten, he was struck by a horse and badly hurt. The whole family lifted up their prayers— _let my child live, please, I love him, he’s my brother, let him live_ —and for a short time the house was filled with Sherlock and his family.

Sherlock wormed his way between his mother and sister and studied the boy’s wound, a dark, glistening crater in his shoulder.

“He’s going to die,” he said.

“Hush,” said his mother, but her brother was already gently pushing her aside and holding his hand out to the boy.

Watching the child’s spirit step out and take his uncle’s waiting hand, Sherlock felt oddly sad.

_Oh, what he could have been,_ he thought.

———

The second time, his name was Caius, and he was not afraid of dying.

“Let me live,” he prayed, as he marched off to war without a doubt in his heart.

Sherlock knew him at once. He didn’t look the same, not quite, but Sherlock and his kin recognized souls better than faces. Sherlock would know this soul anywhere.

“Let me live,” he prayed, as he charged into the fray with his sword drawn and his hands steady.

Sherlock was not obliged to come every time his name was spoken or his domain invoked, but he always felt it. Sometimes it was a nuisance, like being shouted at from all directions at once. Other times, the summons was only a murmur at the edge of his consciousness. He always felt the soldier’s summons distinctly, as if his name were being spoken aloud over a room of whispering. Still, he did not always come. Sometimes he waited, drew it out, prolonged the pleasure.

_“Let me live, please, God, let me live, I don’t want to die.”_

He was still unafraid, though, which was how Sherlock missed the soldier’s death entirely.

Sherlock knelt beside the broken, emptied body and fingered the hole in his left shoulder. He had bled out quickly.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock whispered, and found he meant it.

———

“He should not have been able to come back,” said his brother. “It’s not the done thing.”

Sherlock ignored him.

“It would have taken something. Concerted intent.”

“There was no _intent,_ Mycroft. Sometimes it happens.”

“It does _not_. Our uncle is not well-known for his generosity.”

“I did nothing. Ask Mother if you like.”

Mycroft’s eyes glittered with suspicion, but he never did ask.

———

It was a long time before Sherlock found him again.

He was weaker those days. He didn’t always hear when his name was invoked, on the rare occasion that it was. There were new gods in his world now.

Sherlock came with his mother at the behest of a woman offering prayers for her ailing son. It was a far-flung land, where there were still people who kept the older faith. Many did in times of trial.

His mother sniffed with disdain when she saw the boy. “There’s nothing left for him,” she said. She had never been kind, and of late she had grown callous, almost cruel. “Come.”

“Wait,” Sherlock said. “There’s…”

He was there, giving the mother a comforting smile, laying cold cloths on the boy’s sweaty forehead and spooning medicine into his slack mouth. _“Ieuan,”_ the woman called him. A newer name, dedicated to the newer gods. Sherlock felt faintly betrayed.

He did not leave, though.

The disease took even the doctor in the end. Sherlock stayed, and when the spirits came to lead him away he batted them away.

The boy frowned. “You’re the angel that leads souls to heaven?”

Sherlock shrugged indifferently. He did not know the newer gods well. “If you say so.”

The boy—Ieuan, this time—squared his shoulders. “Well then. Shall we?”

Sherlock’s face broke into a smile. “Amazing,” he said.

The boy still looked confused, but he smiled back all the same.

Sherlock took his hand, and that was all. Their fingers closed, the boy sighed, and dissipated into the ether.

Sherlock wondered if he would be so lucky again. He shut his eyes and found them wet.

———

He knows. As soon as the bullet punches through the cabbie’s chest, he traces its trajectory back through the window, into the barrel and down the hand of the man who would never, ever _stop_ surprising him.

After, they laugh, and Sherlock remembers.

———

It was another many years, and Sherlock and his family were all but gone. He was more or less a man now, unless someone _really_ knew how to look. He still heard his name invoked, when it was. He could not come and go as he wished anymore. He had to _walk,_ like a bloody _mortal_. He did not tire, of course, but it was nevertheless tire _some_.

The tug was easily dismissed at first, like a casual mention of his name. It wasn’t an invocation, though. He mentioned it to his brother.

“Scholars, more than likely,” Mycroft said.

The pull increased.

Sherlock started walking.

He was drawn like a homing bird, or a star coming into alignment with another, the tug stronger with every step. He walked, and he ran, and when he tired he walked again for a spell, and he did not stop.

On the eighth day, he stopped at a priory surrounded by rolling hills and bountiful fields. There was a man tending the gardens. He straightened, and Sherlock felt a wash of emotion rush through him.

“Hello,” the man said.

For the first time in his immortal life, Sherlock fell to his knees.

———

His name was John.

“Sherlock,” he said, testing the name out. “Uncommon name.”

“Wasn’t always,” said Sherlock. “You were in the Crusades.”

John swore when he asked how Sherlock could _possibly_ know that, and Sherlock burst into peals of laughter.

———

“Are you just going to malinger here forever?” John asked two weeks later.

“Why not?” Sherlock said. “You’ve a library.”

“That’s another thing,” John said. “How did you learn to read?”

Sherlock smiled and turned back to his books. His domain was the unknown. His lot was to conquer it.

———

John had taken an arrow to his shoulder in Acre. It still hurt on wet days, which were most days in this part of the country. Seeing him stop working to wince and massage the spasms from his arm made Sherlock ache with sympathy. He briefly wished for his mother and her healing arts, but she had long since retreated north.

“Let me help you,” Sherlock said, because John hadn’t asked.

“I’m alright,” he insisted.

“You’re not. Let me help.”

John moved aside and let Sherlock take his seat. Sherlock took up the quill and looked up at him.

“Read me the text to copy. It’s easier than looking back and forth.”

John’s face went soft. He sat down nearby and reached for the original book.

“It picks up partway through a sentence. _‘...duo in carne una. Itaque iam non sunt duo sed una caro. Quod ergo Deus coniunxit homo non separet…’”_

Sherlock worked quickly and diligently. The time passed easily in that way, and they worked until the sun went down.

John sat back and rubbed his eyes. “I think that’s enough for the day, don’t you?” he says.

Sherlock marked the full stop at the end of his sentence and sits back. “Good, I’m famished.”

“You know, if you’d eat breakfast...”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and got to his feet, leaving the Bible open to allow the page to dry.

———

They spent their days this way, and their nights arguing history and science and philosophy. John’s mind was simple, but crystalline in clarity, like a pool of sparkling spring water you could see right to the bottom of.

“Regardless, there will always be knowledge unworthy of acquiring. The capacity of a human mind is limited, and so some information must be judged lesser and disregarded.”

“Just because we can’t know everything doesn’t mean we shouldn’t _try,”_ John said, eyes hot and fierce.

Sherlock smiled in spite of himself. Just when he thought he had known the limits of human will and curiosity, this man had arrested him.

He didn’t realize he was saying this aloud until he registered John’s furrowed brow and odd expression.

“Sometimes I don’t know about you, Sherlock,” he said.

Sherlock smiled enigmatically. “I am unknowable.”

John didn’t quite smile, but it was a small, amused expression nevertheless.

———

_“You_ have a _Bible?”_

Sherlock looks up. John is holding it out, eyebrows raised.

“Didn’t think you were the type.” He opens it and coughs at the plume of dust. “Jesus, how old is this?”

“It’s a reproduction,” Sherlock lies.

John turns the pages gingerly. His expression is odd, and not quite placeable. “It’s not finished.”

Sherlock hums his acknowledgment. “Yes, it’s missing everything past Acts.” He ignores the implicit “why?”

John shrugs and replaces the Bible. He slides his fingers down the spine and shakes his head.

“Curry tonight?”

“Famished,” says Sherlock.

———

The disease came to the little monastery quickly.

One young acolyte came down with a fever, and the next day five brothers are bedridden. Sherlock worked alongside his friend, fetching clean cloths and removing soiled bedding.

At the end of every day, John collapsed in his little cell and fell asleep. Sometimes Sherlock sat with him for a while, and sometimes they talked a little.

“They’re too young for this,” John said quietly, scrubbing his hands over his face.

He means the boy they had buried that day, the one who had been sent to the monastery to learn and would now never go home. His death sat heavily on John, weighing his shoulders down, draining the vitality from his cheeks and pressing at the corners of his eyes.

Sherlock could only feel so sorry for the boy. “You look pale,” he said. “You should lie down.”

John looked more than pale, he looked worn through. He sighed. “Yes. I should.”

When he did not come in to the infirmary in the morning, Sherlock was not dispatched to check on him, but did anyway.

John was on the floor by his bed.

In all Sherlock’s years, he had never felt so afraid.

He was not so strong as he once was. Lifting John into bed took effort, but less than it should: under his robes, John had grown thin. He knelt by the bed and held John’s hand. His skin was hot and dry.

“Tell me what to do,” he demanded. “John, tell me.”

John drew in a breath. It caught in his throat and he coughed it out. Sherlock’s heart clenched. John tried again. “Just...stay,” he whispered.

Sherlock stayed.

He read to John through the day and well into the night from all the books he could carry back. After several hours, his voice grew hoarse and his lips and tongue clumsy, but he kept reading.

When he looked up as the bells rang for Lauds, John was lying peacefully, and his chest was still.

Something swelled in Sherlock’s throat. He closed his book, set it aside, and laid a hand across John’s forehead. The warmth of life is just ebbing from his skin.

Sherlock’s face twisted. This was wrong. _He_ felt wrong. Cheated.

“No,” he said, and then again, more loudly: “No!”

He stalked the room and issued demands until the sun came up, but his family could hear him anymore.

———

John sneezes into his elbow. Sherlock jerks upright and frowns at him.

“I’m _fine,_ ” John insists. “It’s a cold. They happen. Well. To most people.” He shoots Sherlock an accusatory look.

Sherlock’s jaw flexes. He looks back at his computer screen and tries to set aside the unshakable, irascible panic that had gripped him.

———

“This isn’t healthy,” his brother said. “We are not what we once were. You must be careful, little brother.”

Sherlock scoffed. “Please, Mycroft. We may be weaker, but what man alive remembers how to kill us? I’m perfectly fine—or I would be if you would _let me be.”_

Mycroft sighed heavily. “I worry about you, Sherlock. Be careful. For my sake.”

Sherlock gave him a dark look.

———

Sherlock knew John would come back. Whether he would find him was a mystery even he cannot reveal.

**Author's Note:**

> The Bible verse is a portion of Matthew 19:5-6: _"...the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”_ I am not subtle.


End file.
